Muhammad Al-Arifi: "There is no doubt that a person whom Allah enables to sacrifice his soul, and to fight for the sake of Allah, has been graced with a great honor. The Prophet Muhammad said that the dust of battle for the sake of Allah and the smoke of Hell shall never meet in a man's nose. [...]"Devotion to Jihad for the sake of Allah, and the desire to shed blood, to smash skulls, and to sever limbs for the sake of Allah and in defense of His religion, is, undoubtedly, an honor for the believer. [...]"Allah said that if a man fights the infidels, the infidels will be unable to prepare to fight [the Muslims]. By Allah, the infidel countries today – the U.S. and its allies – dare to fight the Muslims, to rape their women and turn them into widows, and to inflict their corruption on Islam and the Muslims on a daily basis only because they see that the Muslims do not even consider fighting the infidels and conquering their countries. [...]"The Koranic verses that deal with fighting the infidels and conquering their countries say that they should convert to Islam, pay the jizya poll tax, or be killed. If the Muslims had implemented this, we would not have reached the humiliation in which we find ourselves today."

For assistance, please contact MEMRI at memri@memri.org.The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is an independent, non-profit organization that translates and analyzes the media of the Middle East. Copies of articles and documents cited, as well as background information, are available on request.MEMRI holds copyrights on all translations. Materials may only be used with proper attribution.MEMRIP.O. Box 27837, Washington, DC 20038-7837Phone: (202) 955-9070Fax: (202) 955-9077www.memri.org

The current explosive situation in Lebanon is sad, unfortunate and very dangerous. Meanwhile, the Lebanese people are marginalized and exposed to all kinds of terrorism, oppression, poverty, persecution, foreign interferences and fear. The Lebanese government is just a shadow and a fancy tag with no actual content, backbone or teeth. It holds no power or authority and has no free say in any matter at all due to the fact that Hezbollah and Syria fully controls its decision making process.

Hezbollah, the Iranian armed proxy, controls by force, money and intimidation the whole country and is taking both its people and government hostages. Hezbollah, which is merely an Iranian army stationed in Lebanon, is dragging the country and its people as well as the whole Middle East into a state of havoc.

It is worth mentioning that Hezbollah and its affiliates have planned or been linked to a lengthy series of terrorist attacks against the United States, Israel, Kuwait, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Arabian Gulf countries, Iraq, Yemen, Turkey, and other Arabic and Western targets. These attacks include: a series of kidnappings of Westerners in Lebanon, including several Americans, in the 1980s; the suicide truck bombings that killed more than two hundred U.S. Marines at their barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983; the 1985 hijacking of TWA flight 847, which featured the famous footage of the plane's pilot leaning out of the cockpit with a gun to his head; two major 1990's attacks on Jewish targets in Argentina--the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy (killing 29 people) and the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center (killing 95 people); and a July 2006 raid on a border post in northern Israel in which two Israeli soldiers were taken captive. The abductions sparked the 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli war.

It is strongly believed that Hezbollah in 2005 was behind the killing of Lebanon's PM, Rafiq Hariri with 22 others in downtown Beirut. Hezbollah's General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah has been publicly recently threatening to topple the Lebanese government by force and militarily invade Lebanese Sunni and Christian regions in case the Special Tribunal for Lebanon investigating the Hariri crime indicts any of his men.

The West and the moderate Arab countries as well as neighboring Israel have an obligation to step in and offset the balance militarily. It is not a secret that Syria that occupied Lebanon for almost 29 years with an iron fist (between 1976-2005), at least since 1990 has been viciously Syrianizing all Lebanon's institutions, especially the armed forces, media, cabinet and parliament.

In addition, it unlawfully granted Lebanese citizenship to more than half a million individuals in 1994 which had a serious negative effect on the country's very delicate demography.

In 2005 when Syria was forced to leave and end its armed occupation in accordance with UN Resolution 1559 in the aftermath of the assassination of PM Rafiq Hariri, Hezbollah, the Syrian-Iranian armed proxy, took over the job. Since then Hezbollah has been aggressively instigating an ongoing process of devouring the country and now fully controls Lebanon and all its institutions.

What is definite is that the Lebanese people alone are no longer able to reverse the Syrianization and HEZBOLLAHISATION of their country. They need Western military intervention Under the UN umbrella.

The feasible solution would be via a new UN resolution under chapter seven through which the UN troops stationed in south Lebanon (in accordance with UN Resolution 1701) will be given the upper hand not only in the southern region on the border with Israel, but all over Lebanon and specially on the Lebanese-Syrian border in a bid to stop the ongoing Syrian and Iranian massive transport of weapons and men to Hezbollah and to the other Lebanese and Palestinian armed groups.The Lebanese army needs to be put under the UN troops' command and Lebanon declared by the UN a country that is unable to govern itself. I personally have called for such a solution in one of my recent editorials.

There is no doubt that losing Lebanon to the Axis of Evil means losing the whole Middle East and gradually the toppling of all the so called moderate Arab regimes. Lebanon has been for thousands of years a pivotal crossroad for the whole Middle East and history tells us that whoever controls Lebanon will control the whole region. The question is whether the West is willing to stay idle and leave Iran and Syria to fully control Lebanon and accordingly control the whole Middle East?

In fact the moderate Arab countries, Israel and West themselves will gain greater benefit than even Lebanon and the Lebanese people by helping Lebanon to be freed from the Axis of Evil countries and organizations.

No one should fool himself and say, "let the Lebanese solve their own problems", or, "well, we tried to help them but they did not help themselves." No, not at all, because the Lebanese regardless of all the hardships and the Stalinist Syrian occupation fought and fought bravely for peace, independence and freedom more than any other people in the Middle East.

In conclusion, leaving Lebanon to fall prey to the Middle East's Axis of Evil (Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas), will not only hurt the Lebanese people, destroy their freedom, multicultural and democratic system and enslave them, but will also destabilize the whole Middle East and threaten peace and democracy all over the world.

Last Tuesday, standing in front of the Statue of Liberty, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke on the subject of the proposed mosque at Ground Zero. His remarks will be read with curiosity by future generations of Americans, who will look back in astonishment at the self-deluding pieties and self-destructive dogmas that are held onto, at once smugly and desperately, by today's liberal elites. Our liberation from those dogmas, and from those elites, is underway across the nation. But it's worth taking a look at Bloomberg's speech, if only to remind us of what we need to ascend from so our descendants can look back with curiosity at the ethos to which we did not succumb.

As is the way of contemporary liberals, Bloomberg spoke at a very high level of abstraction. He appealed to the principle of religious toleration, while never mentioning the actual imam who is responsible for and would control the planned Ground Zero mosque. To name Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf might invite a consideration of his background, funding, and intentions. Do Rauf and his backers believe in the principles underlying the "inspiring symbol of liberty" that greets immigrants to the United States and before which Bloomberg stood? Bloomberg didn't say. It apparently doesn't matter. Toleration means asking nothing, criticizing nothing, saying nothing, about whom or what one is tolerating. This is the Sergeant Schultz standard of toleration: I know nothing.Click here to find out more!

Knowing nothing, or wishing to know nothing, about the mosque, Bloomberg took it upon himself to lecture his fellow New Yorkers on their obligation to be true to "the best part of ourselves." That part is apparently the part of us that allows at once for intellectual obfuscation and moral preening. Bloomberg never acknowledged that sane and tolerant people might object to a 15-story Islamic community center and mosque right next to Ground Zero. He could not be bothered to take seriously the reservations and objections of a clear majority of his constituents. "In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists—and we should not stand for that." So public sentiment be damned. There's nothing to be learned from the ignorant and bigoted residents of New York.

Instead, Bloomberg lectured: "On September 11, 2001, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive. In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked 'What God do you pray to?' 'What beliefs do you hold?' " True, certainly true. But Bloomberg did not permit himself to ask what vision of god, what set of beliefs, inspired those who set those buildings aflame. Bloomberg said that it was our "spirit of openness and acceptance that was attacked on 9/11." But attacked by whom? Bloomberg wouldn't say.

In fact, he denied the propriety of asking such a question. It would have been one thing—a more defensible thing—if Bloomberg had argued that there was little that could be done legally to stop the mosque and that New Yorkers should therefore make the best of a bad situation. But that was not his message. Instead, Bloomberg came to the Statue of Liberty not simply to accept the mosque, but to praise it: "Of course, it is fair to ask the organizers of the mosque to show some special sensitivity to the situation—and in fact, their plan envisions reaching beyond their walls and building an interfaith community. By doing so, it is my hope that the mosque will help to bring our City even closer together. . . . I expect the community center and mosque will add to the life and vitality of the neighborhood and the entire City."

But have the real, existing organizers of the mosque shown much sensitivity to other New Yorkers? The answer is no—but if you're a contemporary liberal, you don't get into the actual, existing facts in order to make a judgment. You govern on the basis of what the organizers' "plan" nominally "envisions," you appeal to a hope and expectation that even Bloomberg can't really believe in. But it allows him to avoid coming to grips with what is really happening and what lies behind the popular sentiment of disgust, even revulsion.

The conclusion of Bloomberg's speech was odd: "Political controversies come and go, but our values and our traditions endure—and there is no neighborhood in this City that is off limits to God's love and mercy, as the religious leaders here with us can attest." Do the rest of us need Bloomberg's hand-picked religious leaders to tell us that there are no limits to God's love and mercy? We do doubt that encouraging this mosque to be built is an appropriate expression of respect for God's love and mercy for those who were killed almost nine years ago. And we would note that no expression of New Yorkers' love and gratitude for the victims of September 11 has yet been built at the site of Ground Zero during Mayor Bloomberg's tenure.

It is likely, we believe, that civic pressure will cause the mosque to be moved elsewhere—Bloomberg's lecture notwithstanding. But if Bloomberg were to have his way, it's worth noting that he would presumably attend a dedication of Feisal Abdul Rauf's mosque at Ground Zero before he would attend a dedication of a proper memorial to those who died there.

Contemporary liberalism means building a mosque rather than a memorial at Ground Zero—and telling your fellow citizens to shut up about it.

Sunday, August 8, 2010

"Decoy Jew" is a new phrase in the Netherlands. Jews are no longer safe in major Dutch cities such as Amsterdam. Since 1999, Jewish organizations in the Netherlands have been complaining that Jews who walk the Dutch streets wearing skullcaps risk verbal and physical attacks by young Muslims. Being insulted, spat at or attacked are some of the risks associated with being recognizable as a Jew in contemporary Western Europe.

Last week, a television broadcast showed how three Jews with skullcaps, two adolescents and an adult, were harassed within thirty minutes of being out in the streets of Amsterdam. Young Muslims spat at them, mocked them, shouted insults and made Nazi salutes. "Dirty Jew, go back to your own country," a group of Moroccan youths shouted at a young indigenous Dutch Jew. "It is rather ironic," the young man commented, adding that if one goes out in a burka one encounters less hostility than if one wears a skullcap.

In an effort to arrest the culprits who terrorize Jews, the Amsterdam authorities have ordered police officers to walk the streets disguised as Jews. The Dutch police already disguise officers as "decoy prostitutes, decoy gays and decoy grannies" to deter muggings and attacks on prostitutes, homosexuals and the elderly. Apparently sending out the decoys has helped reduce street crime. The "decoy Jew" has now been added to the police attributes.

The deployment of "decoy Jews", however, is being criticized by leftist parties such as the Dutch Greens. Evelien van Roemburg, an Amsterdam counselor of the Green Left Party, says that using a decoy by the police amounts to provoking a crime, which is itself a criminal offence under Dutch law.

Unfortunately, the situation in Amsterdam is not unique. Jews in other Dutch cities also regularly complain about harassment. So do Jews in neighboring countries.

On Monday, the Belgian newspaper De Standaard reported that large numbers of Jews are leaving Antwerp for America, Britain or Israel. Antwerp – nicknamed the "Jerusalem of the North" – is one of the major centers of Jewish culture in the Low Countries. "In London, you are not harassed if you wear a skullcap, but here you are," a young Antwerp Jew told the paper.

Kleinblatt, a famous Jewish Antwerp bakery, which has been handed down from father to son since 1903, will soon break with that tradition because the baker's son has emigrated to the U.S. "We no longer feel safe and welcome here," a young Jew who is leaving for Londontold De Standaard. "Muslim immigrants blame us for what is happening in Israel." Another young Jew, who is leaving for New York, says: "New York is a paradise for Jews. UnlikeBelgium, non-Jews in America are pro-Israel."

Ultra-orthodox Jews remain in Antwerp, but the less orthodox are leaving in droves. Even Jacques Wenger, the director of Shomre Hadas, the Jewish community center in Antwerp, is emigrating to Israel. If the current trend continues, he predicts, in fifty years' time there will be no Jews left in Antwerp except for the ultra-orthodox.

It is often said that the Jews are the canary in the coalmine. When the Jews feel compelled to leave, the light of freedom is being extinguished. Something is badly wrong when the police need to deploy "decoy Jews." Once again, the specter of anti-Semitism is haunting Europe. If the Europeans do not stand with the Jews, they deserve no freedom themselves and cities such as Amsterdam and Antwerp will soon be Islamic cities.